Monday, January 16, 2006

Coleman Still Guilty

DNA tests last week proved again that Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of raping and slitting the throat of his sister-in-law. I used the Coleman case as an example of the extreme gullibility of death-penalty opponents in my Deadly Innocence article. How long before the first Coleman apologist insists the test results were faked as they did in the case of James Hanratty in Great Britain?

Not surprisingly, the Associated Press article reporting the test results looks as though it was written with the opposite outcome in mind, leading with a reminder that DNA testing has freed many prisoners and focusing on demands by death penalty opponents for retesting in other cases:

DNA has the power to cut short nightmares. It can save an innocent man from the horror of life behind bars for a crime someone else committed. It can ease the public's fear of a murderer walking free and looking to kill again.

In the past 16 years, DNA testing has freed scores of prisoners found to be wrongfully convicted, resolved old mysteries including murders and rapes, and transformed the debate over the death penalty. It has shaken the foundations of the criminal justice system itself.

...

Advocates for reform remain convinced that there are other executions that need to be retested, sure that an innocent person somewhere along the way has been executed--even as prosecutors and courts have been hesitant to go back and revisit cases that juries and courts have deemed closed.

Death penalty opponents are desperate for hard proof that one innocent person has been executed. But they aren't likely to find any.